4 Further Challenge Shots: The Fic-ening
by TweenisodeOrange
Summary: A third year of four oneshots to answer the Halloween Unspectacular Challenge. It's just for fun, so expect much nonsense and silliness!
1. Ocean

**Author's Note: Hey, happy reverse birthday present... thing! It's my birthday today so I was like "Screw homework, I'm gonna post the first part of the challenge!" Yeah, it's kinda weird, and the quote has nothing to do with it. I just really love Muppet Treasure Island. **

**This is sort of an excerpt from a story series idea I have. I'm unsure if it'll ever be complete enough to put onto fanfiction though.**

**Ocean**

"_Sailing for adventure on the big blue wet thing!"_

_-Fozzie Bear, Muppet Treasure Island_

"Any sign of it yet, Brain Boy?"

"For the last time, _Cleft,_ I changed my name to _Brain Blaster_!" The hero-in-training shouted over the intercom to his three class-mates who were waiting back at the super-school while their comrade explored in the single-man submarine.

"Asking me every five minutes is not going to make finding the device any easier!" Brain Blaster continued to yell.

"Ok, ok, sheesh!" Cleft replied, holding the microphone and watching the feed from the sub's outboard cameras.

A second boy was sitting in the corner with a very forlorn look on his face. "Ough, my dad is gonna _KILL_ me!"

"Don't worry Tigre, we'll find it before anyone notices it's gone." The third boy, who also happened to be the oldest, assured his friend. "Otherwise, we'll _all_ be expelled."

"Heh, not you Phantom." Cleft told him, "_You're_ the top student at school _and_ already recognized as an international hero."

"Yeah, I don't think that's going to excuse me from letting loose a super villain and then losing his most world-threatening weapon." Phantom replied dryly.

"Guys, I can hear every word you're saying." Brain Blaster informed them over the radio, "And it's really making it hard for me to concen—"

He paused in shock.

"Did you find it?" The others asked excitedly.

The sub pilot shook his head slowly in awe before remembering they couldn't see him.

"I found something else… it's… unbelievable."

The feed from the outboard camera shifted as Brain Blaster fumbled with the controls.

Back on land, the screen displayed a strange under-water horizon, littered with huge old pipes and boat engines; things that could easily be scraps from old shipwrecks. The strange thing was that they were way too clean, and arranged neatly, almost like a city skyline. In fact, were those… windows on the sides of them?

"Is that…?" Phantom began to ask.

"An under-water city, yes." Brain Blaster finished, bewildered. He gazed in wonder as he passed the first building on the outskirts of town. A house big enough for him to enter, shaped like a giant pineapple. A pineapple under the sea.

**Yeah, this is something that's always bothered me about Spongebob when he interacts with the other Nicktoons. In the show, it's usually pretty clear that he's the size of a regular table sponge and he just lives in a small-scale world (Like in Frankendoodle and the Movie, for example) But when he's around the other Nicktoons, suddenly he's the same size and Jimmy! How does that work? So, to make things easy, I just went with the large size option.**


	2. Rain

**Author's Note: CAUTION! The following fic contains ponies. Those of you not accustomed to the pure awesome may want to skip this chapter!**

**AKA- My first ever attempt to write a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fanfic. It's basically plotless fluff. BUT IT HAS DERPY HOOVES AND THAT MAKES IT GREAT ACCORDING TO THE FANDOM! Right?**

**Rain**

"_I wanna know/ have you ever seen the rain/ coming down on a sunny day?"_

_-Creedence Clearwater, Have You Ever Seen The Rain_

It was early spring in Ponyville, which was a busy time for the weather pegasi. The new spring crops required regular sprinkles to keep up their growth, and the occasional spring thunderstorm, just to liven things up. Of course, this was also the time of year when rogue storms tended to pop up.

It was one of these storms that Rainbow Dash was rushing to break up now. She'd dropped into the weather station to pick up her weather schedule for the week, only to hear there was a rogue storm heading towards town, and there weren't enough ponies on-hand to break it up. Dash had zipped off to help, not even stopping to leave here schedule somewhere safer than in her mouth.

Two other weather pegasi were already doing their best to buck the clouds apart, but the high winds made it difficult. Rainbow Dash flew straight through a big grey thunderhead, splitting it in two with her wings.

"Ha! This shouldn't take too long!" she huffed confidently, coming to a halt in mid-air. Another nearby cloud erupted a bolt of lightning that she only narrowly avoided, as if to humble the rainbow-maned pegasus. Dash's eyes narrowed and she tightened her grip on her schedule. So the storm wanted to play rough, huh? She'd show it rough.

Dodging lightning, Rainbow Dash flew up through the columns of thunderheads and burst out the top of the storm. She flew a few feet higher before peaking and turning into a dive. She pulled into a downward spiral, opposite of the spin of the storm, breaking it up from the inside.

When she pulled up, the storm was finally dissipating, and still a few miles out of town! Dash swelled with pride. Well, time to move on to the next job on her schedule. She headed back to Ponyville, only to bounce into a grey, wall-eyed pegasus.

"Ugh, careful Derpy!" Rainbow Dash groaned at the other pegasus.

"Oops, sorry." Derpy Hooves apologized, "But you dropped these!" She pulled a stack of papers out of her mail-bag.

Dash started. She'd dropped her schedule in the storm! "Ohmygosh! Thanks Derpy!" She grabbed the stack.

"Glad I could help, but I think they might be…"

The blue pegasus glanced at the job at the top of the first page. She needed to be at a job right now! "Gottagoseeyalater!" She rushed off in a rainbow-colored streak.

"… out of order." Derpy finished. She blinked her miss-aligned eyes. "Oh well! Time to get some muffins!"

Meanwhile at Sweet Apple Acres, Apple Jack was helping her family sow a new field of apple trees. The sun was beaming down especially hot for a spring day. She wiped away the sweat that was collecting along her hat band. She wished there was some sort of shade over the field.

Suddenly, a shadow fell over the field. The orange pony looked up to see Rainbow Dash pushing a large grey cloud in front of the sun.

"Well would ya look at that! Rainbow Dash musta seen how hot we were and grabbed a cloud for us!" Apple Jack said happily.

"Eeyup." Big Macintosh stated simply, moving on with the planting.

"I gotta say, that is right-near the sweetest thing I've ever seen her do." His sister continued to muse as she too continued sowing. "I'll have to thank her next time I…" She trailed off when a raindrop plopped onto her shoulder. She looked up to see her pegasus friend was now bucking the cloud, causing it to spill its contents onto the field.

Apple Jack's mood quickly turned to annoyance, and she galloped directly under the bucking pegasus.

"Rainbow Dash, what in tarnation do you think you're doin'?"

"Sorry I'm late!" Dash replied, "There was a rogue storm, got distracted, but don't worry, the field'll still get it's water!"

"Late?" Apple Jack asked. "We're in the middle of planting! You're supposed to water the field _Friday_ mornin', after the seeds have had time to germinate and lay down roots! You water 'em now, and they'll all wash away!"

"Friday?" Dash asked, "But today's schedule says…" She lighted down next to the table where she had left her scheduled weather assignments for the week. There, sitting on the top was a sheet that clearly said 'Light Rain, Sweet Apple Acres, 8 am'. But, there at the top of the page, was the word 'Friday'.

"Uh-oh…" Rainbow Dash looked through the rest of the papers. Underneath Friday was Wednesday, and the page after was Saturday. The pages were all mixed up! So then where was Monday's schedule?

"Sorry Apple Jack!" The blue pegasus zipped back to the field and pulled the cloud away, stopping the rain from drowning the seeds. "I had a little mis-hap this morning, got today's schedule mixed up with Friday's."

"Well what _are_ you supposed to be doin' this mornin'?" Apple Jack asked.

"I dunno, I can't find the sheet for today!" her pegasus friend explained, "Maybe it's back around where I stopped that storm… I don't know exactly where the rest of them fell, Derpy Hooves picked them up for me… Derpy! I bet she has it!"

"Well, good luck findin' 'em." The orange pony tried to tell her friend, but before she'd even finished 'luck', she was gone, leaving a rainbow trail in her wake. Apple Jack shook her head. That Rainbow Dash, always in such a rush.

Back in town, at the post-office to be specific, Derpy Hooves was returning from her first mail rout of the morning. Suddenly, in a flash of rainbows, Rainbow Dash was barring her way.

"Derpy! My weather schedule for today is missing! I think you might still have it in your bag!" The blue pegasus said quickly, sticking her own nose into the mailbag. Derpy smacked her away.

"Only mail ponies are allowed to handle the mail, thank you." She then put her hoof to her chin in thought. "I'm sure I gave you all the pages I caught, but that was a pretty windy storm. Maybe a page or two blew away before I caught them."

"Aw man, it's gonna take me forever to find it, and I'll never get today's jobs done!" Rainbow Dash pawed the ground impatiently. She was about to take off at top speed to the site of the storm, when someone called her name.

"Rainbow Dash! Hey Rainbow Dash!" A purple unicorn called to her.

Dash sighed in irritation. "Can't talk Twilight, I gotta go find my…"

"…Missing weather Schedule." Twilight Sparkle finished. "I know, I found it!"

"Ohmygosh! Thankyouthankyouthankyou!" the pegasus made to grab the list, but Twilight pulled it back with her magic, reading it over.

"You know, Rainbow Dash, you should really keep better track of your things. This just blew into the library this morning."

"Yeah, it blew away while…"

"But I am glad to see you're using such a useful time management tool!"

"The weather station makes…"

"Although it could _definitely_ use some improvement. I'm no expert, but I think you should allot more time between jobs got gather more clouds. Oh! I could give you some scheduling pointers! I make _a lot_ of schedules!"

"**TWILIGHT**!" Rainbow Dash finally yelled. "_Give me the schedule so I can go do my job!_"

"Oops." The purple unicorn gave a quiet, sheepish giggle. "I guess you caught me rambling." She gave the sheet to her friend.

"Thanks!" Dash said through her teeth, clenching the paper. She would read where her next job was on the way. She was already almost half an hour late as it was.

Finally, Rainbow Dash arrived at the morning's first job, at the pond, where she was supposed to be providing rain for the ducks and frogs.

"I'm so sorry Fluttershy!" the blue pegasus said as she pushed the cloud into position over the field.

"Oh no Rainbow Dash, I understand." The yellow pegasus assured her. "It's not trouble at all."

Dash looked down at the ducks and frogs, whose miffed expressions said otherwise. She bucked the cloud, releasing the water, and then looked back at the schedule. Well wouldn't you know it? On the day she'd felt the most rushed, it was the day with only one job.

Once the rain shower at the pond was done, Rainbow Dash took off.

"Where are you going?" Fluttershy asked.

"Back to bed."

"But it's only 10 in the morning."

"I know, but today's been long enough already."

**AN: I had a really hard time coming up with something for this prompt, and after struggling with a Time Warp Trio idea that would never fit into a one-shot, all I could come up with was this. It's kinda pathetic, but I gotta write something before the next calculus exam steals all my free time.**


	3. Stranded

**Author's Note: Hey, I actually got more than half of it done before Halloween this year! WOOHOO! Well, I don't think part four will be done until this weekend, but we'll see.**

**This episode features my OC Erika Timens, who showed up a couple of time the first year I did this. You know what they say, write what you know, and I work at a paleontology museum where the big project this year has been a bunch of little raptors from the Jurassic, so that's the inspiration for this.**

**Stranded**

_I have a message from another time._

_-Prologue/Twilight, Electric Light Orchestra_

Erika Timens was scraping away sandstone from bones happily at her workplace, a small college museum. Suddenly, her tool scraped against something hard and metallic. She stared at the small streak of metal that had been revealed. A determined look set on her face, and she got to work uncovering it.

Danny, Timmy, and Spongebob knocked on the museum's back door. The room behind it was the only light on in the building. The rest was as dark as the street. Even though it was only 7:30, the autumn sun had been down for a while now.

The door opened, bathing a small square of the street in light.

"Come on in guys." A strawberry-blond haired teenage girl covered in dust greeted them.

"What's so important that you had to call us over to the museum after everyone else had already left, Erika?" Danny asked.

Erika put on her best mysterious face, which looked more like a cross between a smirk and pleading puppy-dog eyes.

"Well, haven't you noticed who isn't here tonight?"

"Besides all your coworkers?" Danny asked.

"Yes, besides them."

"Oh, your cousin Dave!" Spongebob guessed.

"Besides him too."

"Well… Neutron isn't here." Timmy observed.

"Exactly." Erika nodded, "And I have reason to believe he is in the early Jurassic, at an oasis that is located near what is now Vernal, Utah."

She stepped into the back room and showed them a metal plate she was almost done freeing from the bock of sandstone. It was surrounded by small white bones. The surface had words crudely chiseled into it.

_Time machine malfunction. Running out of water. Send help. J. Neutron._

Below the message several numbers were also engraved into the sheet of metal. Time travel coordinates.

"I was telling him about this fossil quarry we've been working on the other day." The girl gestured to the small bones, "I guess he got curious and wanted to check it out or something.

"Erika! You're a time-traveler!" Timmy exclaimed, "Why haven't you gone and helped him yet?"

"Well, you all know him better than I do!" she defended, "Besides, I figured you'd want to make sure he was safe yourselves."

The three friends sighed. Erika had a weird thought process.

"Anyway, we'd better go get him now." Danny suggested. Erika nodded and pulled a white square-shaped device out of her pocket. A ray of blue light beamed out of the black window in the center, seeming to project a rectangle of blue in mid-air. The four of them entered into the past.

* * *

Jimmy Neutron sat in the shade of the new time-machine he had wrecked on its maiden voyage. It was half-buried at the peak of a sand dune, giving him a good view of the shrinking oasis in the valley below. A pack of small theropods no bigger than ducks had congregated there in the drought. All their prey seemed to have moved on in the drought, so every day more of them died from thirst and starvation. It was a bit depressing, but it provided Jimmy with his means of escape.

When he'd needed to test-run his new time machine, he'd decided to visit the site of the dinosaur quarry Erika had been so excited about lately. Unfortunately he hadn't expected to arrive in the middle of a raging sandstorm. The time machine was badly damaged. Normally Jimmy would be able to use the resources of the land to repair it, but that was the problem. He was in the middle of what could possibly be the largest desert in the history of the earth. Any natural resources he would need were buried under several hundred tons of quartz sand.

Things weren't hopeless though. Jimmy wasn't called a boy genius for nothing. He soon hatched a plan to contact his friends in the future. He knew the mass grave of dinosaurs would fossilized and excavated. He knew a young time traveler would be working on them. He just needed to leave a message from another time!

Once Jimmy had engraved a message onto a plate of metal he'd pried off the time machine, he'd buried it among the dead theropods. It'd been gross, but the situation was desperate. Now all he could do was wait, and hope the message got through.

The theropods were starting to get curious, and hungry. At first they'd ignored Jimmy, as he was easily four times their size, and he carried around a hefty chunk of wreckage to use as a weapon. But they were beginning to realize that they were a lot more numerous, and could easily take him down in a pack. So he sat in the shade of the wreck, atop a dune where he could push debris down on anything that got to close, just waiting.

The waiting finally paid off about a day after he'd buried the plate.

* * *

"Oh hey!" Erika exclaimed as she stepped into the Jurassic, seeing all the little theropods running around. "_Augh_!" He excitement quickly turned to panic as one lunged at her. She instinctively kicked it away, but not before it bit a large tear in her jeans.

Meanwhile, Timmy and Spongebob were fending their own attackers off. Cosmo and Wanda poofed the two away before a few dinosaurs sprung on them, but when they reappeared just a few feet away, there were more hungry mouths waiting for them.

Danny had the great advantage of just being able to phase through them, which caused a lot of confusion in the pack. He changed to ghost form and picked everyone up; flying them out of the melee before anyone got eaten.

"Where's Jimmy?" Spongebob asked, looking down on the chaos surrounding the oasis.

Danny looked down on the hungry predators and tried hard to push what he was thinking out of his head. Unfortunately, Timmy voiced it anyway.

"I hope we're not too late."

* * *

"Guys! Over here!" Jimmy tried to shout at his friends when he'd seen them step out of the blue square of light, but he hadn't had any reason to talk in the last three days, and the fact that water was scarce didn't help matters. So it came out as more of a raspy sigh than actual words.

He grabbed a piece of glass and angled it so the sun's reflection shone right in their eyes. _That_ would get their attention. In just a second Danny turned in mid-air.

Everyone looked to the top of the sand dune where they say Jimmy waving to them. Their faces brightened at the sight, and as soon as they landed, they all rushed to hug him.

"Jimmy, you're alive!" Timmy exclaimed happily.

"Yeah." Jimmy winced, "Uh, guys, I'm glad to see you too, but could you let go? I've got a bad sunburn."

"C'mon bud, let's get you home." Erika opened a time portal back to the present.

**Author's Note: I can't write endings worth beans, especially when it's a one-shot. Ah well.**


	4. Horizon

**Author's Note: I sincerely apologiez for the long wait for this last one-shot. I had some serious writer's block with this. Basically, I went through three ideas that were all scrapped before I even came up with this one.**

**Here we have a perspective flip on the ending of "The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass", told from the perspective of Linebeck. So, it may be a little spoilery for that game, but I don't think I reveal anything that the trophies in Brawl don't already spoil. Also, sorry for any inconsitancies with the game, I actually haven't played it in almost a year.**

**Horizon**

"_Somewhere/beyond the sea,/somewhere, waiting for me/ my lover stands on golden sands/and watches the ships/ that go sailing."_

_-Frank Sinatra, "Somewhere Beyond the Sea"_

Linebeck awoke with a start, lying on the deck of his steamship. He got to his feet groggily and groaned. Ugh. What a nightmare. He felt like he really _had _been repeatedly beaten over the head with a magic sword.

He walked up toward the prow of the ship, looking for the kid while simultaneously trying to remember how the heck he'd fallen asleep on the deck.

"Hey kid! I think we should make landfall. I may be getting…" He trailed off. The familiar green hat flapping in the wind wasn't at its normal spot at the prow. Where had he gotten off to? Linebeck descended the stairs into the engine room. "Link? You down here?" He called. But the engine room was empty. The captain glanced at the cargo box. The kid had better not be hiding in there. That was _his_ hiding spot, thank you very much.

Then Linebeck noticed something with a start. Something was missing! Next to the cargo box! Link's girlfriend, the one who'd been turned to stone, she was gone!

The steamship captain's mind was reeling. What could have happened to her? What was he going to tell Link? But wait, there was no sign of either of them… Linebeck remembered his nightmare. Had… had it all been a dream? The kid, the angry fairy, the ghost ship, everything he'd done since he'd come to Windfall Island?

No. That couldn't be it. The ship was equipped with all the nice new parts the kid had found on his adventures. And he wasn't within sight of any islands. He couldn't have made it this far out to sea without the help of a navigator.

His thoughts once again turned to the nightmare, and this time he had to sit down as a wave of nausea washed over him. It hadn't been a nightmare. It'd really happened. The Temple of the Ocean King, the Phantom Sword, Oshus… Bellum… all of it. The captain gulped. He really did need to make landfall soon. Preferably to someplace with a good pub.

There was a problem with that though. First of all, he was alone on his ship, in the middle of the ocean. While he could chug along alright by himself around a harbor or small island, sailing a steamship was really not a one-man job. Without the kid, he was stuck. Second of all, there were no discernible landmarks on the horizon in any direction, and while he could use the sextant to calculate his position, the kid had been carrying the map.

Linebeck gulped and pulled out his spyglass. He had to find some sort of island or he could be stranded out here until he starved! Or worse, until Jolene found him!

There! There was a ship on the horizon! A small galleon with large white sails. He adjusted the spyglass, focusing on the crew milling about the deck.

No. No, it couldn't be. But no one else wore that stupid green hat. It was Link! And there, ordering the crew around, was his girlfriend! Well and whole and most definitely not a statue.

How? What kind of uncanny coincidence was this? Linebeck shook his head and decided he didn't care how it happened. He had his ship, the ocean was calm, and he was about to be reunited with his friend. That was all he needed to know.

**Author's Note: Well, I had a lot of fun with these this year, and hopefully you all did too. I'm kinda sad I didn't include a 'cartoon characters in an American school of Magic' story like the last two years, but any time I tried to force that on a prompt, it didn't work. OH WELL! I'll see ya'll around for whatever story I post next. Probably won't be until late November/ early December, because I've got a lot of projects coming up.**


End file.
